The Blouse
by C. Clerk
Summary: House confronts Cuddy about a certain beureaucratical issue. Which, of course, evolves into banter and oneupmanship. Sort of HouseCuddy, but quite a bit more than that.
1. House banters

_A/N: This started as an RPG. It was quite a cool little scene, so I wanted to post it as fanfiction. The game's fun, so email me if you like prose RPGs, are obsessed with House, and want to find out about it. That's my pimping for the day. House in this was written by me, and Cuddy by Kate. (katernater at livejournal)._

House hated the lift. Every day he stood there for the same thirty seconds, and sometimes there was music. The absolute worst music anyone had ever heard; and it was played somewhere where you couldn't just walk away from it. You were trapped in a rectangle about four times the size of a coffin and it was the same latest hip-hop tune again and again. There was a little dent in the metal door with the emergency stop button behind it, where he hit the wall with his cane thirty times, once for each second of boredom. It was like the ass groove in Homer Simpson's couch. Just not as comfortable.

One day when he was on his way up for pills, and getting all twitchy, he'd press the emergency stop button, search the whole place for a speaker, and stab it to mincemeat with his sword-cane.

'Cause by then he'd have one, and he'd threaten everything from patients to birds with it.

But right now, he was on his way to the harpy's office, so he'd endure. Though he did consider the chance of a patient dying in the lift, and this being the last thing they'd hear. Pitiful.

Cuddy's office was the first on the right. He went in without knocking. She was on the phone, but was halfway through dialing.

"Yo. Cuddy," it was all the rap's fault. If his speech was unprofessional. All because they played bad rap in the lifts. He had a letter in his hand, and was flicking it in a circle with two fingers. Another letter was sticking out of his pocket. Cameron delivery. She filled out and sent back the familiar forms, but had given him these two.

Cuddy's finger was poised above the nine on the keypad when he'd entered: bold as the brass his cane rotation sometimes adopted. _Nine_. One digit for every year that he'd been under her perview. Nine for the number of times today -- okay, _and_ yesterday -- that she'd had to subvert some legal eagle about his tenuous record. The dialtone thudded lamely in her ear. She couldn't stall him by copping some excuse about being on the line with a financier or board member; he'd see through it. So she replaced the phone on its cradle and gave him her best 'This had better be damned important, House' look (complete with the signature furrow between the eyes).

"Fine, thank you. And yes, this _is_ a new blouse. Sweet of you to notice." She folded her elbows on top of her desk and tipped her head to one side, playing the attentive indulgent. "What do you need, House?"

He cast a hurt look at her expression.

"I know you were on the phone, but you hadn't finished dialing yet, had you?" he said, and instantly all apology left him. As he spoke, he turned his cane about slowly, then relocated it to make a new circle in the nice Dean-of-Medicine carpet. "I'm just wondering if all these 'Team Building' pamphlets were forwarded from you. And this very anonymous note in your handwriting with, 'One hour's all that required. Choose the programme that you like. Try not to kill them.' What I'm wondering is, why didn't you sign it? Don't want to be an accessory to murder?"

He paused, and eyed her front.

"And there, I've admired your new blouse. Very nice." And then he relocated his innocent gaze to the curtains. His smirk barely got to his lips before the loud cough parted them.

From her closet of House-related facial expressions, Cuddy chose the fitting 'I'm still in charge of your paycheck' smirk. She squared the edges of her paperwork against the desk.

"Dr. Martin is a board-recognized occupational psychologist. We're lucky to get him. Last year's _Life Is Like A Leaning Tower Of Office Furniture_ conference sold out Princeton General. Besides," she said, negotiating the cap onto her Mont Blanc pen, "I have a feeling that it never takes you an entire hour to do _anything_."

"As it happens, I didn't choose that programme," House said, promptly throwing it across the room. "I spend too much time brainwashing my ducklings to have all my good work unraveled. I'm running my own programme. Hand-picked some icebreakers and team games from the internet. I don't think some of these ones you've offered, or forwarded, whether you looked at them or not, quite meet my professional standards."

He made a show of unfolding one of the papers.

"There's this cat character - Fantasticat - he can do anything...Sometimes it's easier to see your dreams through someone else - like a funny cat character who can do anything. If you think like Fantasticat does - then you can do anything too. As a reflective tool, Fantasticat can help someone to see what's good in themselves, as if they were Fantasticat, which for some people is a lot easier than seeing it in themselves."

He glanced up in thought. "Actually, that sort of sounds like someone trying to get me - specifically me - to feel good about myself. Maybe their lame alarm was switched off at the time. I don't know."

She fit her chin into the cup of her palm, plaid elbow resting on the desktop. "Does Fantasticat do clinic duty? Because that's where you'll be spending your time if you don't pick up an hour of team training -- _sanctioned_ team training -- before the month is out." She fanned her fingers outward from her cheek.

"Your call."

"Fantasticat turns every task into something fantastic," House said, despite the fact that he was tearing up the Fantasticat leaflet as he said it. "Besides, it's getting a bit old, threatening me with clinic duty whenever I try to think outside the square. Let's at least try the thumbscrews that _I know you have_."

He glanced about the office in a wary fashion, then raised his cane slightly from the ground, determined to obtain the least hideous form of the impending task. "So, when you say, 'sanctioned', that means I have to run my programme through you?"

He raised his brows.

She didn't deny the thumbscrews; merely broadcast a charmingly smug smile. She had worse methods of torture and she tipped her hand to say so: "It's allergy season. This place is a revolving door system for worried moms who think their kids' reaction to ragweed is really SARS or the avian flu. I can spare you that."

She nudged the wire wastecan around the corner of her desk for him to dispose of the shredded leaflet. "And yes, 'sanctioned'. We all have to answer to someone, House, and the buck stops here."

House, thoroughly put out, lobbed the leaflet at the wastecan. It bounced off the side and rolled over the floor.

"Oops," he said. "And I wish I could tell you that I can bend down without agonizing pain, but I can't." He heaved a long sigh. "Well, I'll jot down my ideas and tuck them down your cleavage a little later. After all, I assume that that's the function that neckline serves." Pause. "Come to think about it, I should really be lobbing my trash in _there_."

His look was one of innocent concern for her cleavage. He turned to hobble away, but threw over his shoulder, "By the way, am I _sanctioned_ to consult my unbuilt team about Fantasticat, or do you think team-building will only build up morale if it's a surprise?"

In the seemingly infinite moment when his back was turned, Cuddy glanced down to her suspect blouse and plucked the center of it upward, attempting to dampen his arsenal by correcting "the problem".

She knew that 'consult' was Houseian code for 'torture unmercifully until Foreman rolls his eyes so hard that his entire head moves and either Cameron or Chase are crying'. She knew him well enough not to have to carry around her pocket-sized 'House-to-English' dictionary anymore. A starboard skew of her mouth at his question and a wry kind of humour in her reply:

"Legal can't afford any more of your 'surprises', House."

"No, don't worry, I'll even find something to correct 'my' problem," House said, his gesture soothing. "I saw some tape in a storeroom about 'Bedside Manner' - surely you'd like me to fish it out?"

He smiled and put both his hands on the cane. He had large eyes; the look would be sincere on anyone else.

And those large eyes would have _worked_ on anyone else had they not been directed at Cuddy. But she was long initiated to the mischief that hid behind the seemingly sincere and she knew that he had no intention of ingratiating himself to her -- unless it got him something in return.

She steered her heels toward her desk and made a few distracted keystrokes with her left hand, glancing up at him from the half-light of the computer screen. "If I could be sure that you'd take it seriously?" The fissure between her eyes deepened exponentially.

"You can never be sure of anything," House found the ball of paper on the floor with his cane and knocked it about a bit, giving up on his cow eyes. Cuddy was just slightly more difficult to charm than everyone else, and if he bothered he could do it, but right now there was something fun to do with his cane. "So that's your call, isn't it? Now, what you can be _more_ sure of is that I'll do my damndest to avoid clinic duty; I think we had better stick with that. Safer."

He accidentally-on-purpose hit the ball toward her.

"Oh, damn, you closed your shirt up." He frowned. "No fun."

Then, thinking that was just a _little_ much to go lightly, he made a show of sighing and looking longingly at her breast. If there was one thing that would charm Cuddy, it was making her feel sexy.

Well there _was_ that. Spending most of the day cloistered in budgetary meetings with dry bagels (and even drier _company_) didn't do much for a woman's sex appeal. She just counted herself lucky that she didn't place a high level of importance on being physically appealing. Right. It was a power-play anyway and, on certain days and in certain pairs of heels, Cuddy had the members of the board eating lox out of her palm. Fortunate for House, whose name frequently appeared on the discussion itinerary.

She deflected the paper ball with a folder, banking it into the wastecan. A triumphant little smile. "You'll do it and you'll _like_ it," she said, a note of finality in her voice, "or I'll have Wilson conveniently step out of the hospital every time you need a Vicodin fill-up."

How was that for hardball?

House looked up sharply and nibbled the nails of one hand in a slight parody of deprived edginess. He briefly forgot that that was how he actually looked when stripped of his _bon-bons_ for too long.

"You do know that Wilson's more likely to do what I say, 'cause he knows I can smush his feelings harder?"

This point made, he paused to consider.

"That said, if you can give me a single reason why it might be humanly possible to enjoy team-building, then there'll be a better chance I will."

The look on his face made it quite clear that he'd probably create a torture-house for himself and his team no matter what she might have to say about it. Though to anyone unpracticed in Houseisms, it might just have seemed like patience.

"Because it'll make _me_ happy," she replied and, lest she accuse him of actually trying to pursue that altruistic objective, she followed it up with: "which will means that I'll be in a better position to make _you_ happy."

Whatever 'happy' actually _was_ for Gregory House. She sensed his shift in posture and knew that the floor had been opened up for negotiations. She was as skilled at this aspect of the job as he was at his off-the-cuff diagnoses. She curled her fingers beneath her chin and gave him her prairie-level regard.

"Agree to an hour of team building and I'll give you the rest of the afternoon off."

"I don't want the afternoon off. Since when have I wanted an afternoon off when I'm not on clinic duty?" he smirked. "Do you really think I have anything useful to do out of work?"

Out of his usual habit of finding the least painful position in a situation, he slumped down into the chair in front of her desk, and then regretted the action.

Sitting down would set him up for the usual complaints about his conduct; ah, but at least he could put his leg up on her papers, and had a level view of her bosom.

Cuddy's gaze veered upward and to the left in a 'Moses help me' plea for mercy.

"Thank you for sparing me the effort of making some contrived comment about your social life -- or 'voluntary lack _thereof_' --" she attempted to pull a stack of finance reports from beneath his ankles "-- but I know you'd rather be at home catching up on your TiVo quotas than stuck filling out discharge papers."

If she wasn't going to get her paperwork back (and he showed no sign of moving those Nike'd feet), she'd play into his visual vanities. Arms folded beneath her breasts; a casual forward lean.

"You see, _this_ is why I'd rather stay here for the afternoon," House leaned back and folded his hands behind his head, watched, and picked at his teeth with a thumbnail. "Banter and boobies."


	2. House wheedles

A grey eye shut to half-mast. "What'll it take for you to say 'yes' to this? And no, 'banter and boobies' are not applicable answers."

House shrugged, his eyes going a bit wild with glee.

"When did I ever _dis_agree? I told you I planned my own programme."

"Right." Her smile a patische of his own smug crescent.

She hooked a knuckle around her index finger for each of the ensuing examples: "Because reminding Foreman that he's black, insulting the directionality of Chase's toilet flushes and tormenting Cameron with that reproachable sexuality of yours scores _big_ in the workplace sensitivity column."

House gave her a sarcastic thumbs up, more for the tirade than any sort of apt point he believed her to have made. It all sounded a little boo-hoo to him.

"Going on the premise that any of them can't just _deal_. Sure," he turned his cane slowly between his fingers. "And you're entirely unaffected by me, of course, whatever I consist of in your case."

She managed to extricate the top three sheets of paper from beneath his shoes, frowning as she wiped smudges away from the heretofore neat lines. "I'm just lucky that my health plan paired a TB vaccination with one for annoying diagnosticians."

The Mont Blanc found its way back between her fingers, a few quick scratches against a scratch pad before she devoted the expensive ink to rescued pages.

"You're the one who named my sexuality reproachable; so chances are I'm not just an annoying diagnostician to you. I'm an annoying diagnostician with reproachable sexuality. The distinction's important," he peered at her. "So you had better rustle up a vaccination for that, too."

He finished turning the cane and put it over his lap in a content sort of way. He was not smiling, but there was a strange positioning of his mouth and brows that suggested satisfaction with the comment - and at the fact that he was getting away with distracting her from her work. An outright ordering out was something that he couldn't quite squirm out of without copious amounts of charm.

She had to be in a very good mood - not in the least because she was wearing that blouse.

Either in a good mood or possessed of a _very_ efficient assistant whose flair for Colombian grounds was one of the primary reasons for his hiring. She dipped a finger into the coffee cup at her wrist, came up negative, and winced her mouth to one side. Palms to the edge of the desk, lifting easily to her feet. His self-assured expression was a little too cat-that-got-the-Jewish-canary for comfort.

The eager assistant in the outer office rose to his feet and patted down a Sears-Roebuck tie (that he had told her was Armani) and Cuddy pointed to the coffee cup on her desk. He held up a palm of understanding and circled around his desk to reset the carafe.

A handsome bookshelf lined the far wall and she heaved a thick tome from between the medical journals, returning to thunk the book into his lap. She leaned over him (for extra emphasis) and began leafing through the vellum'd pages. A finger paused over one particular entry.

"_Reproachable_," she read, "of or related to shame, disgrace or scorn." A laconic smile.

"How's that for a distinction?"

"Ow," he said, as the gargantuan book hit his leg. He sucked air in through his teeth, but struggled through the moment to flick her hand off the page. "And I see you've conveniently chosen meaning number two; one is 'to express disapproval or criticism of', and I could work _that_ out by your tone." He heaved the book off his lap, unscrewed his pill bottle in triumph and took a Vicodin. It was cause for celebration, after all. Nearly everything was, when it came to a drunkard with a pint in his hand, and so it was for House and Vicodin.

Besides, it gave him the pleasant sensation of being relieved from pain as he was insulting Cuddy.

She gathered the book into her arms and snapped it closed (though with some difficulty -- the thing easily weighed twenty pounds), a puff of dust coiling upward to tickle her nose. She experienced a momentary flash of guilt that she'd unloaded a weight onto his leg, but was morally reprieved when she saw him pop a painkiller.

She was fitting the book back onto the shelf when her assistant came in, balancing a refilled coffee carafe and a fresh stack of paperwork. He teetered nervously when he saw House, having been castigated by him before, and offered a weak smile to Cuddy before leaving caffeine and commerce on her desk.

She glanced back at House as she poured. "I guess we all have our vices."

"Coffee? Your vice?" House chuckled and poured her some coffee. This act of generosity was immediately explained by him helping himself to a paper cup of the same. "I see you live life on the edge." Sarcasm, but then he added, "Especially since now you're forcing my drug habit."

He determinedly gave the appearance of being trodden on, and played with the idea, since she was in a good mood, of bringing up the subject of the conference. Frowned slightly at her desk planner.

When he plucked the carafe from her hands she had started, taken a moment to blink, and tried to rearrange the contents of his face into another person. When that proved fruitless she accepted the idea that he'd done something _nice_ for her and murmured her thanks. She offered him a packet of sugar (none of that cancer-causing stuff for Lisa Cuddy, though she suspected _he'd_ be long dead before cancer could touch him -- strangulation was more likely) and poured some into her own cup. A thoughtful sip.

"I _live_ to see you miserable," she said, following the direction of his gaze. Hm. A skirted hip propped to the edge of her desk. "All the _really_ interesting stuff is on my iCal."

"Then you should be very well alive," he said in response to her comment about his misery. "By the way, I think your hip has a claw attached to it," he eyed it as though it were a creature. He emptied several sachets of sugar into his coffee, stirred it with a finger, dipped the finger into the empty sachet to find the remaining granules, then licked it clean. He liked these little invented-on-the-spot rituals. Anyone watching would think he had done it for years, when in fact he'd taken his coffee black the other day.

He had a thought. It was a risk, but it was a thought.

"Hey," he said into the cup, "anything stronger than this about? For when Cuddy's at her wit's end with the doctor of reproachable sexuality?"

One of her manicured eyebrows looked prepared to jolt itself upward off her brow and into the stratosphere. She was glad that the rim of the coffee cup caught her dropped jaw. She tongued a bit of java from the corner of her mouth before answering:

"What, like a bottle of Kahlúa stashed in the bottom drawer of my desk?"

"Exactly," he didn't even blink. "Or rum - rum's my crisis drink." His smile was very cheerful. "And I _have_ some crisis drink now. I mean, seriously - " He tipped his Vicodin bottle upside down and shook it forlornly. Nothing came out. "What's a cripple to do but drink rum _when he has the afternoon off_?" he added, in case she fired him then and there for misconduct.

He threw the pill bottle obediently into the wastebasket - looking up for approval as he did so - then pulled out a nice, large, silver flask.

"What's yours?"

She'd been _kidding_ about the liqueur in the desk; she imagined he _knew_ that. Good old, straight arrow Cuddy, who could be the postergirl for responsible living if 'responsible living' meant being a _work_aholic.

A look of utter horror flashed across her face, white-hot anger quick to replace it as she felt a storm of needlepricks up and down her arms. "House..." she began, her voice terse "...there had _better_ be nothing more than _apple juice_ in that flask."

"Are you _afraid_ of _rum_?" he hadn't meant to distract from the point, but this was too rich. "No, never mind - I carry apple juice in a flask to scare everyone. No lie." He took a swig, grimaced, and then nodded. "Gets easier. Want some? In your coffee?"

He grinned and poised it over the mug.

She whisked her mug out of his way as if the flask was full of concentrated anthrax. "Sure! You want me to make some mixers for your peer review? I'm sure if you give Dr. Collins a buttery nipple he'll make nice and forgive you for getting _drunk_ on the job."

She grabbed the nearest file -- which just happened to be the one for the Tahiti conference -- and whacked him on the shoulder with it.

House made a soothing gesture with both hands, and flicked a lock of her hair about in a thinking fashion. It was interesting, appearing casual while concentrated.

"I don't get drunk on the job," he couldn't refrain from informing her. "Work can be fun, you know." In fact, the hope of an interesting case was one hell of a beacon for a Vicodin-and-diagnostics addict, but he didn't want to crawl on the ground. He made an exaggerated glance at his watch.

"Oh, look. Ten past six. You're officially off. One swig, and I'll do _two_ hours of team training." An obedient underling smile, still not completely devoid of House-like qualities.

It was true that he wanted to see her sip straight rum. But he was also facing in a certain direction.

This was college all over again.

Memories of a certain evening down in the Village: a desperately-lit bar and a round of twenty-one shots for her twenty-first birthday. Her tab had been paid by none other than the Medical Miracle Man himself and he wouldn't let her hit the floor until twenty-one shot glasses preceded her. She'd spent that night (and most of the next morning) wrapped around the base of her toilet. _Please, god, let me live through this long enough to punish him._

She'd hoped to have done _that_ much by becoming his boss. And still he pushed.

"Are you out of your _mind_?" A pause and a hand to fend off his response. "Don't answer that. I'm liable."

House glanced to the side, shook his head in a casual fashion. Twitched a little, then blinked, amazed that he could feel pain again so soon. Took a small swig.

"And why would I be out of my mind? You're off work. This is rum. You're so sober it's almost depressing." He raised his brows.

"Some people have the remarkable ability to manage pain responsibly and _without_ the use of alcohol or narcotics," she cut, this time feeling no pity for his discomfort.

He couldn't wheedle her like he used to. Get her to turn over her mind as easily as a dog rolled over to have its stomach scratched. She circled round her desk again and began collecting her files, the abruptness of each gesture clarifying her agitation.

"Pain?" House ran a tentative finger about the bottle rim. "I didn't know workaholics had pain. I always thought them a breed that could have fun and fund their lives at once."

He gently prodded the flask across the desk toward her.

"And since you _are_ a workaholic, and your conscience is telling you that one swig of rum is worth two hours of House's irritation and boredom..."

She hauled her briefcase onto the desk and snapped open the latches, throating a dry laugh. "'Conscience', _right_. I'm surprised you can say that word without soliciting an appearance from a guy with hooves and a pitchfork."

Gall left bitterly bright spots of taste on her tongue and she took another sip of coffee to wash it away.

House, thoroughly irritated and a little tipsy, wandered around her desk. And then he put his head down on it. And then, eased himself across it. Files fell off the other end.

"Oh, _come on_," he said, tapping out a little tune on the mahogany beside the flask.

He lay still for a moment, looking at her, and then said,

"I do have a conscience, I just deal. Everyone ought to deal, and because they don't, they're a pain in the ass. Everyone's hypochondriac, everyone's melodramatic. Drink your rum, Leese." He chuckled, and waited for her reaction to _that_.

While he waited, he folded his fingers across his stomach. The rum wasn't particularly helping his leg. He had secretly known that - in technical medical terms - but of course, all things would pass away with a few light _sips_.

And then he realised that he had told her that he had a conscience - and now she would look for signs of it. He would have to be careful. Ve-ry.

Cuddy knew that House was no stranger to lying. It hadn't hitherto, however, involved him _lying on her desk_. And Gregory House was a tall man, which meant that every available inch of mahogany was currently occupied with a limb of some sort. Her briefcase and precious (distracting!) files were trapped beneath him. She sighed, resisting the urge to squeeze the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger.

"Don't call me that," she muttered, but her voice had lost some of its usual acerbity. She was tired; too tired, even, to collect the scattered files. When Lisa Cuddy didn't immediately trip over herself to put all things in order, something was grating.

"Rum," House said, as though he were being filmed for a commercial. "That's the answer. Don't worry, I won't try to foist any Vicodin on you, pained as you might look."

He unscrewed the top of the flask.

"And hey; you know it's sexy when I've sipped out of it."

Watching her expression with yellowed eyes, he suddenly said, "So, what file do you want, workaholic harl - ?" Stop. And burrowed underneath himself.

She was about to say something clever -- at least _she_ thought it so -- about the salivary transmission of "jerk", but was distracted by a feverish pecking on the glass of her door. She glanced up, expecting a board member (or the Grand High Inquisitor), but was met instead with the panicked whey-face of her assistant. He was standing stick-straight with shoulders so rigid that they could have been measured with a T-square.

He was pointing to the man on her desk and mouthing 'Should I call security?' with fish-faced exaggeration. Cuddy shook her head, passed an 'This is par for the course' shrug and dropped into her chair, a hand over her face.

"PIM Conference?" It was a weak suggestion.


	3. House challenges

A/N: PIM stands for "people in medicine", I believe. "Harl" was half of "harlot". "gall" is a word that can be looked up in the dictionary.

House laughed. It was meant to be a derisive laugh, but was slightly longer than the average one was meant to be. He smiled pleasantly at the assistant, concealing the rum flask behind his stomach.

"Nope," he said over his shoulder, "this is a special sort of conference."

And he decided to leave that ambiguous.

She had the intractable urge to shove him off her desk; in fact, the tips of her fingers ticced upward to follow through on that want, but higher cognitive function halted them.

"He's just jealous," she ventured with a rascally tone, one gray eye slanted down to him, "_he's_ usually the one on his back on my desk." It never hurt to cause that leg to twitch -- for entirely _selfish_ reasons.

"Yeah," he continued in the same tone she had used, determined not to be put out. "You wouldn't believe the sums she pays me. But if you did, you might as well believe she was desperate. After all," he said, "I'm the cripple here."

How many times had that saved him? Uncountable; and he felt no shame in using it now. In fact, there was a button undone, and he felt himself obligated to peer through it.

He busied himself, with the distraction of the assistant, to write on a post-it, 'Who will level with whom? Who knows, who knows?' and shove it toward her. Then another, as he knew how deep it would get, 'You know, when I first met you, I thought you preferred girls.'

That Mont Blanc ink -- fine, _quality_ ink that cost twenty-eight cents per penstroke -- whisked across Post-Its in that doctor's scratchy scrawl. She plucked the tool from his fingers and wrote on the second note: _'Likewise.'_

A solemn, perfectly innocent (and undeniably chaste and boss-like) upward look as her capable assistant stammered his "goodnights" and backtracked into the foyer, nearly stumbling over his untied shoelaces.

Now she really _did_ shove him. It wasn't enough to topple the man off of her desk, but it _did_ rock him enough for her to seize a spatial gracenote and pluck a few files out from underneath him. "You'd be surprised at the turnover rate for assistants at this hospital."

He leapt up on his injured leg, and said and showed nothing. Tipsy.

"The second note," he said, "you do realise that it's more insulting for you, adds cred for me."

Content with saying this - as though it meant anything, that frat-boy mentality - he went back a couple of steps.

She monitored the skew of his feet, if nothing else for the mission of avoiding a row of curmudgeonly complaint should he go over. Her files now sport crumpled edges, courtesy of his lower back. She began the tedious process of straightening out what he'd bent.

"I'd be frugal with that," she said of his credibility, "it's harder to keep in stock for you than Vicodin."

House sat back down in the chair.

"It's harder to keep in stock for me _because_ of Vicodin," he said, and swigged from the flask. Tapped a two-note tune on it. Then put it back down on the desk and looked at her. Waited with expectant eyes.

He really _was_ one of the most irritating people she'd ever met. If his medical prowess hadn't rushed in to support his splenetic attitude, Cuddy would have soured on him a long time ago.

Her throat vibrated with a discordant rumble: the kind that signaled to another party that the person in question was quite done with the conversation and would prefer to move on to other activities. She nudged open the center desk drawer and retrieved a box of paper clips, fitting the little bits of coiled wire over some of the thicker files and papers. A slow, put-upon upward glance to the flask -- and then to him.

"I have to _drive home_, House."

"So do I," he said, "and my transport's more dangerous than yours." He mouthed his 'I win' to his hands. "Not that there's much reason to go home."

This was said as afterthought; looking toward the ceiling, he began to play with the corner of a file, and then with another of her expensive pens. He decided that anyone who actually purchased a pen over five dollars was either fooling themselves as to the quality or completely pretentious.

The flask remained on the desk, and House liked the prudish way she kept looking at it. "By the way, that two hours deal expires at midnight."

She thought about telling him that she could get her luxury vehicle up to one-hundred-and-twenty on the straightaway just outside Trenton, but that would give him kindling for his _I Told You You're Not As Good As You Claim To Be_ bonfire.

She was imperceptibly stung when he tossed off the casual comment about her feeble social life -- and its implied lack of a romance category -- but she knew that he was even more aloof than she was. She rationalized it by making an _effort_, which was more than could be said of him. More rationalization now as she tried to sketch out the liabilities of bowing to his compromise.

She rubbed an earlobe between her thumb and forefinger, resting her temple against a spread of knuckles. "Why midnight?" A tired question posed with an even less enthusiastic demand for an answer.

House shrugged.

"Seemed the thing. Like executions at dawn. And that's one swig, remember - fair, come on. Though if you want to add more sips for more hours, I'm open to negotiation."

She was weakening - there was a slightly hopeless expression in her face and position. He just kept up with the staring eyes and the intently lined brow. Amazing, the things one could achieve with fair negotiation and patient persuasion. Can't always have the nasties in the open. Hey; it worked for Iago.

Whenever he was intently concentrated, his hands always fiddled with something, played some game. While he watched her, he tore a paper slowly into little bits. He wondered if this was a _nervous_ habit, or just to keep the brain moving. Leaned toward the latter. Without self-bias? Yes, still the same. Otherwise it would mean he was consistently nervous.

"Obfuscation's your _real_ addiction," she observed, licking the tip of her finger to better sort and collate, "you gonna' tell me that the green _bicycle_ rides at midnight now?" He liked to manipulate people; almost as much as _she_ liked to _undo_ his manipulations. He liked pulling the puzzle apart. Cuddy liked putting it back together.

"What's more annoying: obfuscation or avoiding answering questions?" House frowned, scattered bits of paper. "Especially when I know that you want to show me that you _can_ drink if you want to, but are just too sensible to do it. And that's why Cuddy's Cuddy."

A thought came to him. He perked a little.

"Did they call you Lisa Cruddy at school? I _so_ would have started that."

The janitorial staff will think that she'd had a coniption fit: the scattered files, the confetti of paper on the floor. When she left at the end of each day her files were at measured ninety-degree angles, not a Horton's Who worth of dust to be found anywhere on her desktop. 

She squared off a sheath of papers and flashed a smug expression: "Only the ones who were jealous of consecutive 4.0 grade-point-average," she said, brushing a bit of hair from her high brow.

If he was trying to incite her to drink through insult he was in for a sorry disappointment. She'd gotten _that_ vaccination, too.

"Oh, bleagh. Spew," House muttered. "I would have _killed_ you in school. And not out of jealousy, either, 'cause I'm a genius." He mimicked her smug expression with a slightly effeminate slant. "I could have predicted you'd overshoot doctorhood immediately. You've got the pompous admin thing right down pat. If you weren't in the high chair, you'd be restless forever. A woman's work is never delegated, is it?"

Pleased with his creative use of Basil Fawlty, he prodded at the flask. "Drink now, or forever hold your peace."

If proverbial feathers were ruffled, Cuddy didn't show any sign.

She knew she'd held her own in undergrad: six nights a week spent bent over her desk with her nose in a biology book, the other night piously dedicated to passing out the shabbat wine at Beth El temple. A flawless completion of the MCATs solidified her entrance into the medical school of her choice and she had risen quickly through the echelon of academia.

House, whose admitted genius came without so much as a raised finger, had an insoluble knack for pointing out said genius at every opportunity. Cuddy had reconciled with the idea that she might not have been as intuitive a doctor as he was, but she was certainly no less _cagey_.

Proud. That's what she was, and she emphasized that point by tapping a manicured nail on the desktop. "I know I run the risk of sounding like a broken record, House, but women _do_ like to be on top."

"You more run the risk of sounding like a feminist, which is even worse," House's expression was suddenly one of theatrical fear. He had the eyes of a rabbit gazing at doom. "Or making some sort of euphemism, which is sort of hot, but creepy if you _are_ a feminist."

He stared at the desk for a moment, concentrated, running the involved fuzzy logic of the sentence through his mind. Nodded. "Yep. That's it."

His forehead settled, and he sat back with an exhale. He was tired, too, but then again, he always was. Getting everywhere involved a lot of, well, _dragging_ himself about. Perhaps he could learn to walk on his arms; that was almost as neat as a limp and a cane. But not as strangely attractive.

Her expression bothered him. Something about it made him want to _say_ something. And that something came to him in a beat.

"Hey..." he looked up again. "Have you realised that I'm not your boss _purely from personal preference_? I think that's pretty cool." He winked at her. "Plus, I could keep my rum and do it."

His weakness -- well, one among the _many_ -- was that he frequently led himself down paths of perpetual pontification and monologue. Which was all well and good, as it kept him focused on a singular topic (if not her blouse than something else) and vulnerable to surprise.

Which is precisely why Cuddy chose that moment to snake her hand across the desk and seize the flask. The cap had already been courteously removed so there was nothing to prevent the immediate _ingress_ of its contents down her throat. She held two fingers beneath her chin as she imbibed -- not one sip, not _two_ -- the entire remaining contents of the thing.

House, surprised out of his next ramble, kept very still as he watched her drinking. Very still, as though movement would ruin it all somehow. God, he was good. He was so good. He was sort of disappointed it had only taken a few prods at the same old tender patch to bring this about, though. He had hoped that something more inventive might do the trick.

No complaints, though. Cause and effect. He waited very expectantly for her face when she came up, hoping she wouldn't immediately mention anything about sips to hours. Then his pleasure would be complete.

She passed the worst of the post-drink facial expressions on to the ceiling, righting the keel of her balance after a few moments of brain-versus-stomach. Sips to hours, nothing. She spoke hoarsely around the lingering liquor, rattling the empty flask:

"I believe I _own you_ now."


End file.
